Small Town Crime

He came out of the woods at the back of the rural bank in upstate New York. He was wearing a baseball hat, sunglasses, and a balaclava. Nothing of his face was visible. He was also wearing nylon basketball warm-up pants with snaps to allow for easy removal while standing and a loose-fitting nylon top. He went around the side of the small stand-alone building, avoiding the drive-through window on the other side. No customers were in the bank. The manager and her assistant were at the two teller windows.

Two homicides within minutes of each other! Robbery? Revenge killing? Contract hit? The police have to solve this quickly, or the impact of this horrific crime on the town will be devastating. Detectives Hendricks and Adams embark on an investigation that takes them far outside of upstate New York to another country.

The internal conflict of a rape survivor starts the yearning and calling for vigilante justice. Leading a normal life, but tormented internally - does Helen answer this call? Helen is spitfire who may or may not be happily married, and she is your local women's rights defender. She yearns for a world free of rape and violence, but what will it take? She is tired of seeing women left for dead - of the rape kits that only overload the system, causing these cases to rarely be solved. But how much does she want to change the world around her, and how much is she able to ?

Missy Turner thinks of herself as the most ordinary woman in the world. She has a lot to be thankful for: a great kid, a loving husband, a job she enjoys and the security of living in the small town where she was born. Then one day everything gets turned upside down. She loses her job, catches her husband making out with the neighbor and is briefly taken hostage by a young man who robs the local café. With her world rapidly falling apart, Missy finds herself questioning the certainties she's lived with her whole life.

Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army stint, and ill-advised marriage, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she is named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the sheriff whose shoes she’s filling - and the even more mysterious realities of the life he was hiding from his own colleagues and closest friends.

Tina, Biker’s Coffee, whatever you call it, it’s just as deadly. Crystal Meth. The heartbreaker, life taker, home wrecker - it was hitting the Jersey Shore. Tina had come to town with her kiss of death. The Don wanted us to stop them. We had to finish this. The Don was sending his top man, Johnny Koman, down. But we needed one more guy on this hell ride. A tough bulldog bastard. We needed Sal Bandino. Wise Guys versus Biker Madmen. Hell was coming to the Jersey Shore, and it was up to us to stop it. Two to the back of the head and all.

It's early October - time for the Fall Folk Art Festival and Bake Sale in Lilyvale, Arkansas. Every business along the town square will benefit from the event, including the craft store run by Leslee Stanton Nix - a.k.a. Nixy - and the Silver Six, a group of retirees. In charge of making the festival go smoothly, Nixy is confident that it will be a success.

Stella Hardesty dispatched her abusive husband with a wrench shortly before her fiftieth birthday. A few years later, she's so busy delivering home-style justice on her days off, helping other women deal with their own abusive husbands and boyfriends, that she barely has time to run her sewing shop in her rural Missouri hometown. Some men need more convincing than others, but it's usually nothing a little light bondage or old-fashioned whuppin' can't fix. Since Stella works outside of the law, she's free to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

When Ruie Ann Park - a pillar of the Van Buren, Arkansas, community - was found beaten to death and lying in a pool of blood in her home, the police and local residents assumed her son was the murderer. But the years would uncover a more sinister story. Up till that night, the Park family seemed to have it all.

Roccabusambra. Paesino dell'entroterra palermitano, fine anni 70. Un paesino tranquillo viene scosso da un delitto di una efferatezza inaudita. Il ritrovamento del cadavere di una ragazza all'interno del confessionale dell'unica chiesa del paese è un fatto che sconvolge l'intera comunità sia per le modalità del delitto sia per l'età della ragazza, 17 anni. Il fatto criminoso porta in paese un'ondata di curiosi e giornalisti. I carabinieri non riescono a trovare il colpevole, anche se i sospettati sono in molti.

In the town of Willow Creek, where the annual Willow Festival usually marks the height of excitement, tea shop owner Emma Thorne finds herself steeped in a murderous mystery that threatens to uproot the very foundation of her beloved community. When the town's curmudgeonly tycoon, Harold Blackwood, is found dead beneath the ancient willows he threatened to destroy, Emma's curiosity — much like her prized tea blends — begins to percolate. Armed with nothing but her wits, a mysterious map, and an unlikely alliance with a ambitious city journalist, Emma delves into Willow Creek's shadowy past.

Tom Tim's got a tiger by the tail. He has a plot of land to sell, buyers are scarce as hens' teeth, and...well...he lives in the middle of Murder Central. Whoda thunk a drowsy Minnesota town could earn that title? Tom certainly didn't. In fact, he'd probably ditch his dead end position at Crossroad's Realty if it weren't for the ever gorgeous Sara Smith. If he had a ghost of a chance with that woman, she'd be worth every drop of crazy mayhem erupting all across Crossroads. So, he endures.

A short story introduces listeners to Brian Panowich's brutal, mesmerizing North Georgia landscape, in preparation for Like Lions. Enter the world of Brian Panowich, where Gareth Burroughs runs McFalls County, in North Georgia, and all the criminal enterprises therein. Two of his three sons, Halford and Buckley, are aiming to follow in his footsteps. The third, Clayton, has turned his back on the family and became a lawman, a sheriff in town.

Luigi Pirandello ci presenta i Siroli, coppia di anziani mezzadri siciliani costretti a una vita di miseria e sofferenza. Una quotidianità orrenda fatta di fatiche bestiali, malattia e povertà estrema, che però i due anziani sopportano nel segno di una fede cieca e assoluta. Hanno sacrificato tutto per far studiare loro figlio Giovanni in seminario.